This Guy Made a 'Star Wars' Protosaber in His Garage and It Actually Works

A pretend lightsaber is pretty easy to make. All you have to do is hold your hands like you’re wielding a sword, then swing that imaginary sword while making the iconic “zzzzzmm, zzzzmm” as it cuts through the air. You don’t need much more than that to evoke Star Wars.

Say you wanted to build a real-life lightsaber, though. In that case, you’d probably be somebody like the Hacksmith crew. They already brought you Thanos’s sword and a re-creation of Thor’s hammer, but in a new video, they’re turning from the MCEU to a galaxy far, far away to build their own “protosaber”—an Earth-based precursor of the weapon Luke Skywalker made famous.

As they explain, it’s not going to be easy. Star Wars is, as you probably know, not a documentary—it’s space opera. A real lightsaber would require something like 1.69 gigajoules of thermal energy, more than a bolt of lightning, and the equivalent of 120, 280 AA batteries. Cramming that much power into the handle of a sword is nearly impossible.

But, according to Star Wars lore, the lightsaber was preceded by the protosaber. It’s a lightsaber plugged into a portable battery pack, basically. With some diligence and ingenuity—and a whole lot of batteries—they make it work, producing a glowing hot piece of metal that is “incredibly dangerous” and even makes the lightsaber noise as you swing it. It’s, to put it mildly, not something you should try at home, but watch the video if you want to see some mad scientists get giddy over their new creation.